surgent wrote:Similarly, for those who like the 8000m peaks, why not ask them why they're climbing the 26,240-ft peaks?

Yeah, but the metric system makes sense

I agree, with mountain heights. It makes more sense to me to be concerned with 4000 meters than 13,123', or 14,000'. The rest of the world knows 4000 meters, but not feet measurements. I used to be on a 14er kick, but got off it pretty fast when I went to CA and discovered some great peaks that had far more prominence or prominence over the neighboring valley than any CO 14er and yet were only 12,900' or so. I can't think of any CO 14er where I could stand on the summit and look out a few miles and down 8,000'. Not to bash CO 14ers. My altitude goal is to try and get over 4000 meters once a year, for no particular reason other than to be able to say I did. Oh, and I prefer a scramble over a walk up. I've been lucky with that since 2007 and will try to make it this year.

I'm starting to think altitude is over rated unless you just want to work really hard to breath. A friend of mine did a few 5000 meter peaks in South America back in January. He basically felt that adding altitude didn't do much more for a mountain than make it harder to climb because of the lower atmospheric pressure. He indicated that he would prefer technical summits at a lower altitude, one where cerebral edema is never a threat. I was looking at some peaks in Glacier NP. even though only 9300' feet or so, they were very impressive looking scrambles with 4000 feet of prominence. That can be more interesting than just shear height of a peak. Lastly, some places in the world people live on level ground at 14000'. Flagstaff is at 7,000', and I'm finding that it isn't that great after a while unless you just want to be acclimated to higher altitude all the time.

surgent wrote:Climbing "all" the peaks is an impossibility, but Bob sure did push the margin.

All the ranked peaks (and named unranked peaks, and a lot with unofficial names as well) have been listed on LOJ for many states, and John Kirk is adding more states all the time. Once a list exists, someone will complete it. The list for Colorado wasn't complete yet when Bob Martin was climbing here.

CO has 4,365 ranked peaks, going down to an elevation of 4,711 ft. As soon as the list was finished, there was an explosion of people climbing lower peaks in CO. Some of these people are climbing up to 70 ranked peaks in a month, even in winter, most of them lower peaks. Sooner or later, someone will climb them all. Young people who start out climbing with the lists already in existence, with GPSs, and with beta all over the internet have a huge advantage over the climbers of Bob Martin's era and will make short work of the lists.

AZ has 7,397 ranked peaks, going down to 701 ft. CA has 10,993 ranked peaks, going down to 301 ft. Those numbers sound like a significant challenge. But, in the same way the majority of CO peakbaggers only care about the 14ers, it seems like CA peakbaggers only care about the SPS and related Sierra Club lists.

surgent wrote:Similarly, for those who like the 8000m peaks, why not ask them why they're climbing the 26,240-ft peaks?

Yeah, but the metric system makes sense

I know I'm opening up a can of worms here and we've gone down this path before, but other than the fact that conversions in metric are done by powers of 10, what else about it makes sense? In practice, we tend not to measure in groupings of 10 or 5, but in halves and doublings.

The non-metric feet/lbs/etc system is a hodgepodge of measurements I'll admit, but most depend on the ability to double and halve easily. For example, a mile can be divided in half 7 times before needing to use "partial feet".

I lived in a "metric" country (Australia), and while they officially stated everything in metric, in practice everyone talked in terms of miles, "stones" and other archaic old-British measurements.

There's a good reason days are divided by 24 hours, not 10, an hour into 60 minutes, not 100, etc. 60 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. Very convenient.

I think the fact that Everest "barely" creeps above 29,000 feet, and is the only mountain to do so, is neat, if for no other plausible reason. It's in a class by itself. Granted, judging a peak's worth by its height alone is an argument in and of itself.

I have nothing against metric, and it is very easy to grasp once you get the hang of it, but it isn't necessarily "more sensible". It's just easy to convert between measurements is all.

One way to see all of the ranked peaks is to click on "Peaks by Elevation Range," then look at each elevation grouping (i.e. "Arizona Twelvers List"), then at the Profiles (i.e. "View Twelver Profiles"), which gives a list of all the 12ers in AZ. If you choose the "Arizona Low Peaks List" and then "View Low Peak Profiles," and scroll to the bottom of the resulting list, you can see the numbers I gave above, for the lowest ranked peak in AZ.

If you then click on any peak name (if a peak doesn't have a name or a nickname, its elevation is its name), a profile page will come up for that peak, showing a map, the coordinates, and everything else you could want to know about it.

Instead of looking by elevation, you can also call up peak lists for each county, and for each quadrangle, for any of the states listed. There are also lists sorted by prominence, for all peaks with 1000 ft or more of prominence. Play with the menus; the site is an incredible resource.

Back on the home page, some of the menu options to the left of the photograph refer to lists that cross more than one state, such as state highpoints and county highpoints, and my personal favorite, the highest 1000 ranked peaks in the contiguous US.

In addition to using LOJ as a resource for acquiring lists of peaks and data about those peaks, anyone can become a member of the site and log their own ascents of peaks in his database, creating a record-keeping system for themselves.

surgent wrote:Similarly, for those who like the 8000m peaks, why not ask them why they're climbing the 26,240-ft peaks?

Yeah, but the metric system makes sense

I know I'm opening up a can of worms here and we've gone down this path before, but other than the fact that conversions in metric are done by powers of 10, what else about it makes sense? In practice, we tend not to measure in groupings of 10 or 5, but in halves and doublings.

The non-metric feet/lbs/etc system is a hodgepodge of measurements I'll admit, but most depend on the ability to double and halve easily. For example, a mile can be divided in half 7 times before needing to use "partial feet".

I lived in a "metric" country (Australia), and while they officially stated everything in metric, in practice everyone talked in terms of miles, "stones" and other archaic old-British measurements.

There's a good reason days are divided by 24 hours, not 10, an hour into 60 minutes, not 100, etc. 60 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. Very convenient.

I think the fact that Everest "barely" creeps above 29,000 feet, and is the only mountain to do so, is neat, if for no other plausible reason. It's in a class by itself. Granted, judging a peak's worth by its height alone is an argument in and of itself.

I have nothing against metric, and it is very easy to grasp once you get the hang of it, but it isn't necessarily "more sensible". It's just easy to convert between measurements is all.

It's just what you're used to. The fact is that pretty much the whole world uses metric, so it would be nice if the US changed as well. I grew up with metric and I still have difficulty grasping the imperial system used here (been here almost 6 years now). Using feet for measuring things seems too small for me. An area that's 100 square meters feels easy to grasp. When someone tells me 1077 square feet, I have absolutely no idea what that is LOL Being able to multiple things by 10 (100 etc.) just feels a lot easier.

Temperature is another one. 0C as the freezing mark makes a lot more sense than 32F to me.

surgent wrote:Similarly, for those who like the 8000m peaks, why not ask them why they're climbing the 26,240-ft peaks?

Yeah, but the metric system makes sense

I know I'm opening up a can of worms here and we've gone down this path before, but other than the fact that conversions in metric are done by powers of 10, what else about it makes sense? In practice, we tend not to measure in groupings of 10 or 5, but in halves and doublings.

The non-metric feet/lbs/etc system is a hodgepodge of measurements I'll admit, but most depend on the ability to double and halve easily. For example, a mile can be divided in half 7 times before needing to use "partial feet".

I lived in a "metric" country (Australia), and while they officially stated everything in metric, in practice everyone talked in terms of miles, "stones" and other archaic old-British measurements.

There's a good reason days are divided by 24 hours, not 10, an hour into 60 minutes, not 100, etc. 60 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. Very convenient.

I think the fact that Everest "barely" creeps above 29,000 feet, and is the only mountain to do so, is neat, if for no other plausible reason. It's in a class by itself. Granted, judging a peak's worth by its height alone is an argument in and of itself.

I have nothing against metric, and it is very easy to grasp once you get the hang of it, but it isn't necessarily "more sensible". It's just easy to convert between measurements is all.

It's just what you're used to. The fact is that pretty much the whole world uses metric, so it would be nice if the US changed as well. I grew up with metric and I still have difficulty grasping the imperial system used here (been here almost 6 years now). Using feet for measuring things seems too small for me. An area that's 100 square meters feels easy to grasp. When someone tells me 1077 square feet, I have absolutely no idea what that is LOL Being able to multiple things by 10 (100 etc.) just feels a lot easier.

Temperature is another one. 0C as the freezing mark makes a lot more sense than 32F to me.

Either way, doesn't really matter. My comment was more as a joke

I had the opposite problem in Ozzie. Hectares never made sense to me. I did get used to celsius in about 2 days. No one there (at least when I was there) uses kilgrams. Everything is "stone". It took me forever to figure that one out (1 stone = 20 lbs).

I agree: Fahrenheit could be tossed in a moment. There's no logic to it at all. The only advantage is that when it's blazing hot, it sounds more impressive to say it's 110 instead of 44 degrees.

No offense intended. This is a topic that interests me. There's a lot of psychological aspects to how we adopt measurements and use them. The ideal measurement system (imo) would be base-8. It would keep the nice consistency of the metric system, and allow for the halving/doubling advantages of the non-metric system.

We will probably always keep miles in the US: virtually the entire country is surveyed and sectioned out in square miles (and parts thereof). Overlaying kilometers would be awkward and expensive. A good book to read: Measuring America, by Linklater.

Teresa Gergen wrote:So, Hyadventure, what exactly are you planning to include on your list of Contiguous US 14ers?

I have plans to finish-up the "15" California 14'ers this year. Hopefully I'll get to the entire list of Washington 14'ers next year. And will most likely try to touch the top of 53 more ( total 58 ) Colorado 14'ers before I turn 60 (8 years).

Andinistaloco wrote:Good info there. But there are a few summits (300-foot rule and all) missing from the list. Not surprising, I suppose....

If you have the familiarity of a local in an area and believe peaks are missing from the list, I'm sure John Kirk would want to know what you're looking at, and would correct it if so, or would explain why he left them off. Not sure exactly what your "300 foot rule and all" comment means -- it's possible to use the small "Change Criteria" link at the top of any list and reset the prominence value to 0, in order to see peaks that don't meet the 300 ft rule. If you do that, do the peaks you have in mind show up?